6 persuasion strategies for education leaders in the digital age

Best-selling author Dan Pink says persuasion needs a reboot in the Age of Information; here are his six recommendations for how education leaders can influence others to act

Best-selling author Dan Pink kicked off ASCD’s annual conference in Los Angeles by noting how important persuasion is to education leaders’ jobs—and yet the dynamics of persuasion have changed radically in the Information Age.

Pink said he was involved in a recent study that surveyed 7,000 full-time adult workers in the United States. When they were asked, “What percentage of your work involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value for something you offer,” the responses averaged 41 percent.

That means people spend an average of 24 minutes of every hour trying to persuade or move others as part of their job, Pink said—and that’s certainly true of education leaders as well.

But with information so easily available to anyone with internet access, the keys to successful persuasion have changed. It used to be that the person doing the “selling” had all the power in a relationship, Pink said; now, that’s no longer true.

“Information parity has shifted the balance of power” to create a more level playing field, he said—and this change has important implications for education leaders.